The Church of Freaks & Geeks

Halfway through our viewing of the show Freaks & Geeks‘s lone single season of television, I really don’t understand how a show this funny, with a cast of James Franco, Jason Segel, Seth Rogan, and Linda Cardellini, and produced by Judd Apatow, could be canceled. I suppose when it came out in 1999 it was just ahead of its time. It certainly fits NBC’s mold of critically acclaimed, yet under-viewed comedies (like 30 Rock).

Without divulging too much of the plot, the show follows the Weir family as they attempt to navigate the treacherous social waters of high school as a family. Lindsay Weir is a boring, academic girl that begins to craze some meaning in her life, even if it comes from bad influences, after her grandmother dies. Sam Weir, her younger brother, is a high school freshman who hasn’t hit puberty yet. Not talented in much of anything, Sam is a geek who quotes Star Wars in order to win arguments with his other geek friends.

One of the themes in Freaks & Geeks is the universal nature of “freak” and “geek.” None of us can escape it. The jocks are “freaks” to the freaks and vice versa. What resonates with me about the social world of Freaks & Geeks is that we should be reaching out to the freaks and geeks among us in our complex post-high school world. What starts in high school never really ends, when you think about it, and in our post-Christian, secular society morality is no longer one of the arbiters of social hierarchy, but ”cool” still is. In a world where it’s okay to be a lavishly blatant sinner, it’s pretty easy to hang out with the sinners like Jesus did. But Jesus also spent time with the freaks and geeks around him, and we need to keep in mind that there are so many people in our churches today that we don’t spend time with because they’re not “cool.” So next time you see a bunch of wallflowers at small group or church, invite them over to your house or have a chat with them, because part of serving the body of Christ is recognizing that as a peculiar people we are all freaks and geeks in Christ.